BOOKS OF THE TIMES

BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Russia's New Appetites (For Those Who Think Young)

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Published: March 8, 2002

HOMO ZAPIENS

By Victor Pelevin

Translated by Andrew Bromfield. 250 pages. Viking. $24.95.

Victor Pelevin, the enfant terrible of post-Soviet Russian literature, is a cultural magpie, borrowing the hip poses of MTV and disaffected argot of the Beat poets and combining them with elements reminiscent of his great countrymen: the ferocious satire of Mikhail Bulgakov and the phantasmagorical sense of the absurd purveyed by the dissident writer Andrei Sinyavsky.

At its best, Mr. Pelevin's pastiche has resulted in hilarious and unsettling works like ''Omon Ra,'' which leave the reader with a coruscating vision of the cold-war-era Soviet Union and post-Glasnost Russia. At its worst, as in his new novel, ''Homo Zapiens,'' it results in a messy hodgepodge of philosophizing and manic invention, perfunctorily glossed with druggy stream-of-consciousness ruminations and lots of willfully juvenile humor.

''Homo Zapiens'' quickly became a cult best seller in Russia, where it was published as ''Generation P'' (meaning, the author has said, ''Generation Pelevin'' or ''Generation Pepsi''). But while the novel gets off to a rousing start, satirizing contemporary Russia's headlong embrace of consumerism, it quickly devolves into a self-indulgent (and frequently incoherent) rant about everything from the mass media to the Russian Mafia to the evils of advanced capitalism.

The hero of ''Homo Zapiens,'' Babylen Tatarsky, belongs to the generation that grew up with memories of Communist rule and came to maturity in the chaotic days that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union: a lost generation, cut off from its parents' past and uncertain about the future; in thrall to Western pop culture but skeptical of the West's promises; eager for change but cynical about politics.

Though Tatarsky was once intent on a career as a poet, he decides that with the collapse of Soviet power his verses -- which were concerned with eternal verities, things that were ''unchangeable, indestructible'' -- have ''lost their meaning and value.'' With the help of a friend, he becomes an advertising copywriter, which he jokingly compares to being a propagandist under the old Soviet regime.

In the opening chapters, Mr. Pelevin provides an amusing look at the personal fallout that the momentous social changes in Russia have had on people like Tatarsky, and he also finds considerable humor in Tatarsky's efforts to tailor American ads to the tastes of Russian consumers. There are some shameless attempts to enlist the help of Shakespeare in selling laundry soap and Calvin Klein clothes and exploitive allusions to Russia's Parliament to promote Parliament cigarettes.

One of Tatarsky's ads uses Chekhov to market Gap clothing and reads: ''Russia was always notorious for the Gap between culture and civilization. Now there is no more culture. No more civilization. The only thing that remains is the Gap. The way they see you.''

Mr. Pelevin's initial descriptions of his hero's dabbling in psychedelics -- he ingests some hallucinogenic mushrooms and experiences a series of bizarre visions -- are entertaining enough. But as Tatarsky becomes increasingly invested in supernatural promptings, the book's narrative grows more and more flaccid and long-winded.

A session with a Ouija board leads to an encounter with the spirit of Che Guevara and a portentous Marxist-Freudian disquistion on the evils of television and capitalism and modern man's obsession with money. An acid trip similarly leads to a dreamlike encounter with a dragonlike creature that discourses upon subjects like the Tower of Babel, assorted Sumerian gods and the ''fire of consumption'' that is eating away the soul of modern man.

These experiences seem to have little effect on Tatarsky's determination to continue his copywriting career, and he soon finds himself working for a mysterious organization that supposedly manufactures virtual-reality versions of Russian politicians. It is suggested that for years politicians -- in both Russia and America -- have been animated three-dimensional images, created and orchestrated by teams of computer-graphics technicians working in concert with scriptwriters.

''Our scriptwriters are 10 times as good'' as the Americans', says one Russian patriot. ''Just look what rounded characters they write. Yeltsin. Zyuganov, Lebed. As good as Chekhov.''

Although this conceit is mildly amusing, it feels like a pale echo of the uproarious conclusion to ''Omon Ra,'' which purported to reveal that the Soviet space program was an elaborately contrived fraud. What's more, in this novel Mr. Pelevin does not even try to make the most of his story's satiric possibilities, allowing his story line to dribble away in silly hallucinatory subplots involving Tatarsky's being selected as the husband of the ancient goddess Ishtar. As a result, ''Homo Zapiens'' ends with a whimper, not a bang, a conclusion unworthy of a writer of Mr. Pelevin's antic talents.